


certain dark things

by northerntrash



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bats, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, mentions of Lúthien/Beren, tolkienrsb 20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26181595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerntrash/pseuds/northerntrash
Summary: There is a song, there is always a song, where the princess is rescued from the monster, where good triumphs over evil, where the stars shine brighter at the end of all things.In which Lúthien seeks a monster, but finds something else.
Relationships: Lúthien Tinúviel/Thuringwethil
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18
Collections: Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020





	certain dark things

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020. I had the honour of partnering with [aredhels](https://meredithsdardenne.tumblr.com/), who made [this gorgeous edit](https://meredithsdardenne.tumblr.com/post/627893775873851392/certain-dark-things-luthien-x-thuringwethil-for). They are lovely and first brought this ship to my attention some years ago, and I have been obsessed ever since. I hope it fits with what you were after, and that all of you enjoy it!

There is a song, she thinks, as she watches the elf approach.

She doesn’t know this creature, but there is something hollow and aching in her chest that makes her think she should. She gets those sometimes, echoes of a past that has been burned from her memory, a past when she had a different type of power. Perhaps in her previous life she had been gifted the ability to read the future, to understand the meandering rivers of fate: perhaps some part of it lingers in her, resonating in her ribcage, because sometimes when she looks at someone or something she gets these feelings. She no longer has the skills to unpack them, to understand what they mean, but their power lingers.

Then again, perhaps she is projecting. Maybe she never had prophetic powers and is reading too much into gut instinct. She supposes it doesn’t matter – there is no way to regain those memories, to know what she had once been, and if sometimes this void appears beneath her skin there is nothing she can do to stop it or make it go away.

What she can do, is watch the elf.

Her hair is long and dark, her eyes wide and beautiful. She is no doubt beloved amongst her people, though what she is doing here is a mystery.

She exhales through her nose, silently, and gently moves the curving bones of her shoulders, her wings, just enough to ease the stiffness left in the joints. She does not want to be seen or heard, not yet.

There is a song, there is always a song, where the princess is rescued from the monster, where good triumphs over evil, where the stars shine brighter at the end of all things. She knows this song, or at least the essence of it – she has heard it sung as she sweeps on silent wings through the darkness above the settlements of elves and men, hidden from campfire lights and garden parties. They are always singing, they are always so achingly loud, endless sound echoing through the darkness. They tell stories like this, over and over again. She must be the monster, she supposes: it is what they call her, whenever they see her, with hatred and derision in their eyes as if she had been given any choice over her form or function.

Monster. There are worse things to be called.

The setting is right for it at least. Her fortress is her own, buried deep in the rock, hidden from all eyes – she doesn’t trust any of them, not even the ones who call themselves friends. Especially them: she has seen their teeth, and the speed at which they tear the throats of those they once called allies. They offered her rooms in their monolithic fortress, but she does not do well inside them. She does not know when He made her this way, whether it was intentional or not, but she has a bit too much of the wild in her to do well inside carved walls. She stays there now and again for appearances sake, or when they ask it of her, and they have decorated a room in the way they thought she would like. It is covered in violent carvings and has no windows. There is fabric everywhere, dark and heavy velvets that block out the sounds.

She is never able to rest in there. Not being able to properly hear people who are approaching makes her uneasy, and she needs to taste the air. She slinks around the corridors looking for windows, though they are infrequent and mere slits in the wall. After enough hours, she can feel the stillness of the inside choking her, the bitter taste of sweat, wine, and charred meats lodging in her throat.

Better to have a place of her own, where she is safe and she can rest, a place they will have to fight to take her. If they ever find her. There are eyes everywhere, always watching, but she is quick and cunning, and she only enters or leaves the cave when she is certain she is hidden by the darkness. Even if they found the entrance, they would struggle to navigate the passageways and tunnels, and the noise always echoes down here: she would hear them long before they found her, and she would have time to fly. And if she ever hears the sound of approaching armour and swords she would run, no doubt about it. Menfolk and elves have no sympathy for people like her, and her own side would not hesitate to slaughter her should they feel the need.

But the elf has managed to creep up on her, has got surprisingly close before her senses notified her of an intruder. It was less dark now than it had been, too – less dark than it should be. The elf appears to be emanating some kind of glow: at first she had thought it was a lamp, but now she sees it comes from within her, pushing through her skin as if her heart were alight and her skin was too thin to contain it. It hurts a little to look at her.

She wonders if all elves glow like this when they are trapped so far from the light of the sun, if this is something innate to all or some of them, but deep down she suspects it isn’t.

The elf wears simple clothes and soft shoes, entirely impractical for traversing cave systems.

Many years ago she found this place, quite by accident, looking for somewhere secret to roost amongst the bats. She likes the small creatures, beyond the simple affinity caused by her shift form – she likes the rustling sound they make when they nest, their dark, intelligent eyes, the softness of their furred bodies when they press against her for warmth, sensing one of their own. She had followed a group of them inside, expecting a cave of moderate size and dimensions, which is what she found: but at the back, there was a passage. It was small and too awkwardly shaped for most armoured humanoid forms to pass through, though her bat form can manage it well enough. It is also at the top of the cave wall, hidden by shadows and impossible to reach without the gift of flight – or so she had thought. Once you squeeze through, the tunnel widens a little, glittering with malachite and hematite crystals, sharp and dangerous. Anyone trying to approach would be shredded before they even got close, but she and her bats can manage it without too much concern.

It seems impossible that the elf would have been able to find her, to climb the cliff, navigate the narrow passageways and sharp, protruding rock. Yet here the elf is, looking as fresh as if she had just stepped from a bathhouse, her skin slightly flushed with eternal health and her dress pristine and pale blue, like morning mist. There are no scrapes or scratches, no injuries, and also no weapons – this is not an attack, or at least, not an obvious one. She does not have the walk of a soldier or a warrior, either. There is something ladylike about her, about the way she steps, as if she is more used to dancing.

She hisses, near silently, through a mouth not designed for words. She often sleeps in her other form. Her humanoid one feels vulnerable, in a way that the bat never does: it can hear anything approaching, it can sense the movements of the air currents, and it can fly away at the slightest provocation. It has good claws, too, though her humanoid form isn’t lacking in that department either. It isn’t lacking in any department, really. It is tall and beautiful in the way that the deepest canyons at night are: magnificent and terrifying, full of the endless horror of the void. Some creatures cry when she fixes her eyes on them, though she doesn’t know what they are seeing. Perhaps there is something, hidden in her eyes, something even she doesn’t know about. She suspects that it slithers.

The elf is beautiful, she acknowledges, as she watches her approach. Beautiful in that hard, dispassionate way of the elves, perfectly symmetrical and vaguely otherworldly. Beautiful to consider, but not to stare at for too long, because deep within that beauty is the sense of something different, something other. This elf has that look, like she was carved to captivate, a power that comes from elegance and grace. Too many people would underestimate that, would assume weakness. But there is strength in this creature, assurance despite the delicacy of her features. That being said, she is definitely not a warrior – there is no caution to her approach. She is quiet, but only in the way that all elves are, not because she is being stealthy. If she knew better she would be trying, but she does not have the frantic energy of someone lost, nor the fear of someone chasing their death. She is calm but decisive in her movements, as if she knows exactly what she is doing here. It is not clear if the elf has noticed her yet, hidden as she is amongst the bats, on the ceiling. There is no light in this cave save that faint, silvery glow that comes from the elf, as if her very skin were starlight.

She shifts, uneasy. Her humanoid skin is drab, grey but strangely soft, like moth wings. The colour of it changes in the light, is dappled with shades of grey that she doesn’t have a name for. Sometimes she thinks her skin will start to disintegrate, like those same moth wings after enough time has passed. Sometimes she finds herself rubbing at her arms, hoping it will happen, hoping _something_ will happen.

Nothing ever does.

She remembers fragments of a time, another life and another age, where her skin was kissed the colours of the sunset, when she and her kin took form from function and sang to the stars, to the moonlight and the sunrise, and to all the beauty of creation at every stage between. The elves have names for what she used to be, but she tries not to hear them. She knows they would never believe that a creature like her could ever have been created from such noble stock. No one would believe that she might have once matched this elf in beauty and brightness, sunsets against starlight. The thought hurts, but she pushes it away. She is stronger now than she ever was, a strength born from terror. Now she clothes herself in shadows, and only remembers those moments in the deepest dreams, where no one can reach her, where no one can take them from her.

It burned when that part was stripped from her, when she was changed: she remembers that much at least. The pain was like nothing she had experienced since, as if something vital was being stripped from every bone. She knows that He did that to her, but she doesn’t remember if she had a choice or not. When she is alone, she likes to pretend that she did not, that he took her and forced this upon her, but it is a difficult story to swallow. She knows His other generals, his chosen favourites. She has seen the fire in the eyes of Gothmog and his Balrogs, the devotion and longing at the heart of Annatar, forever in His shadow. They had come to him willingly, all of them, because they had been seduced or for their own dark purposes. They had made their choice, and she must have made hers, too. He had not been lacking for volunteers.

The elf is bright, too bright. The glow reflects off the veins of azurite in the walls and floor, turning her fortress into a place of beauty. She feels loathing burn in her throat. This was her sanctuary, her refuge, and she did not want to see it lit like this.

“You are trespassing.”

Her voice is quiet, hoarse. It has been many days since she had to use it, and it always hurts a little when she has to force vocal movements out of a form that was not designed for it. There is no one who wants to hear her anymore, other than the dark forces she serves, and they have not called for her in some time. When they do, they rarely ask for her opinion, and her songs are not required: all they want is her compliance, and the terror that she brings to the creatures they place before her. She shifts her wings slightly, but not enough to disturb any of the bats that are clustered around her.

The elf is looking around her now, peering. She still does not look afraid, nor does she seem surprised.

“What is your name?” the elf asks, but that is wrong, it makes no sense. That is not the natural response to accusations of trespassing, and no one ever asks the monster who it is, or why it does what it does.

She has had many names, and she pauses, considering. Which one to give? There is the name that she left behind her, but she does not remember it: she does not even know where the immediate desire to give that name comes from, she has not thought of it in years. Thuringwethil is what Sauron calls her, what most people at Tol-in-Gaurhoth call her, although not to her face. Few and far between are the people who feel confident enough to do that. The rest give her titles: Lady of Shadows, of Darkness, variations on that theme. She doesn’t know who started that, or who chose Thuringwethil, or what the name even means for that matter. Did He name her, when He stripped away what she had been, when He changed her? Perhaps. It makes something in her chest clench to think of it, but now is not the time. The elf is still looking around the cave, trying to see her, but there is anticipation in her face. There is no way to accidentally wander into this cave, and there is anticipation in her eyes.

“You already know who I am. The question is, who are you?”

The elf smiles a little. It softens the beauty of her face, changing the smooth alabaster to something that looks a little more real, a little more natural. There is nothing cruel in her expression, no rage or malevolence, but Thuringwethil feels a prickle of fear at the sight of it anyway. It is rare to see this level of calm, of composure, of self-assurance. It might mean the elf is over-confident, but she feels in some primordial part of her that that is not the case.

“My name is Lúthien,” the elf says, her voice lilting. A singer as well as a dancer, perhaps. The name sounds familiar enough, but Thuringwethil has never paid that much attention to the names of elves. She may have heard it in Tol-in-Gaurhoth, but she is just as likely to have picked it up from camps as she flew overhead, on one of her many spying missions. She doesn’t remember names unless it is necessary for a mission: it doesn’t do her any good to try and put them to the faces she sees on the battlefield: it makes her hesitate.

She inhales, lets go of the crevice her claws are clinging to, and falls. As she does so, her bones begin a complicated physical rearrangement as she leaves her bat form. By the time she lands, she is humanoid again. She stands much taller than the elf, her skin dove grey, robed in spider-silk and black gems. Queen of the night: another name she has acquired for herself over the years, and she wears the title well. She finds power in her appearance too, but hers comes from a different place. Her eyes are too large and her teeth too pointed. Lúthien does not flinch, to her credit, though her eyes widen slightly, betraying her. Thuringwethil breathes in deep the scent of her, of moonflowers and dew and the open world, and beneath that, where there should have been fear and doubt, only assurance and conviction. Unusual.

“Thuringwethil,” Lúthien breathes, and there is respect in her tone. Good. Too often have they treated her like the animal they think she is, and it never helps them. She knows how she appears: she is gaunt, her skin stretched too tightly over bones that seem just a little wrong. Her cheekbones are distended, giving her a monstrous complexion: her arms and legs are both just a little too long, as if she had paused in the process of turning into something even more horrific. He used to laugh and tell her that she looked a bit like a spider, that she should stay away from the Dread Ungoliant in case she was mistaken for one of the great spider’s kin. Thuringwethil never really understood why that would be such a bad thing: Ungoliant had one thing the rest of them would never have, after all – kin to call her own.

“You have trespassed in my home, elf,” she says, and she did not need to raise her voice: the echo of the cave did enough, and above her head the bats made their hissing sounds in response to her voice. “You have come here deliberately, despite knowing the death sentence this places on your head, and yet you stand here with confidence, as if I had summoned you here myself. Tell me, what gives an elf girl such courage?”

Lúthien smiles, just a little.

“Love.”

Of course it was. It was always love in the stories, wasn’t it? The princess always did what she did from pure motivations, otherwise it wouldn’t be much of a story, not worth passing around the fire at night, and elves and men always seemed to need something to cling to. Sometimes it was a father or brother, much more rarely was it a mother or sister, but more common than any other, it was a prince. The princess had to do something to prove her love, to save her love, to do something to justify her place in the story as anything more than decoration. No doubt there was a burly man somewhere, being unhelpful whilst the princess took all the risks. Thuringwethil felt a moment of pity for this creature, this beautiful elf who would die down here in the dark for the love of a man, who would lose everything the world could ever have given her for something as inconsequential as this.

“I am sure that you have a lengthy story to tell me,” Thuringwethil says, bored. “I am not interested in hearing it.”

And then, Lúthien surprises her.

“Good,” she answers, and her voice is clear as she raises her hand. “For I have no interest in telling it.”

From the tips of her fingers came something that Thuringwethil could feel with every inch of her body, though she could not see it at all: something powerful, drawn from a different source than Thuringwethil was used to. It settles around her, in her bones, taking root inside her.

“Clever,” she hisses, through bared teeth. She tries to move, but her limbs feel like stone, barely responsive. “What have you done to me?”

“It won’t last,” Lúthien says, and there is a note of honesty in her voice that Thuringwethil believes despite herself. “I don’t need it to – I need information out of you, and once I am satisfied, I shall leave and the magic will wear off. You may sit though. I suspect this will take a while, and I do not want you to feel uncomfortable.”

Thuringwethil raises an eyebrow. It takes considerable effort.

“You are not a conventional interrogator, girl. Or do you have a blade tucked away somewhere?”

Lúthien smiles, just a little. “I don’t think we will need to resort to that.”

Thuringwethil pulls at the weight in her bones. She feels ungainly beside the elf for a moment before she pulls herself to her full, not unsubstantial height, and remembers who she is. Her soul might be mired by confusion and doubt, haunted by the echoes of a past she can’t remember, but she is Thuringwethil, the dread Shadow, the creature that haunts the nightmares of man and beast. She will not be cowed, not here, not in her own domain.

“Who are you?” she asks again, and this time there is power in her voice. The elf takes a half step towards her, faltering, against her will. Her eyes widen as she feels the compulsion settle in her mind, tries to fight it, but Thuringwethil has more strength here than anywhere else, in the endless darkness, the weight of the world around her.

“My name is Lúthien,” the elf repeats, and hesitates for a moment. “I am here because I need to get something that I have no way of getting: I need to rescue someone I have no hope of saving. I have some skill, but not enough, and my heart is wed to love and honour, but that is not enough either.”

“Pretty words,” Thuringwethil spits, and a strange expression flits across Lúthien’s face for a moment: regret, mixed, perhaps, with pity.

“I shall return when you are more amenable to conversation,” the elf says quietly before backing away, leaving Thuringwethil in the dark.

When she is quite sure she is alone, she sits on the cold cave floor, and lets the bats crowd around her with their comforting weight.

* * *

She is standing again, however, when the elf returns. Her eyes are terrible voids, but Lúthien does not hesitate to look into them, staring without the flinch of fear that other creatures react with. In fact, she stares at Thuringwethil in a disarming, different way, as if everything about her was fascinating rather than horrifying. Her eyes take it all in: the robes of cobwebs and shadow, the long lines of her limbs, the glimmer of dark stones at her throat and wrists, jewellery given as gifts by her masters, jewellery that sit so heavy against her skin they feel more like manacles than decoration. Sometimes when Thuringwethil removes them she finds that they have cut through her skin, leaving long gashes in their wake. She still wears them, though. Such things are expected of her.

Lúthien watches her with a strange wonder. She has the look of someone who has seen too many terrible things, and now is no longer afraid of them.

“What are you?” the elf asks, in the end, and Thuringwethil rolls her eyes.

“You ask large questions for such a small creature.”

“I may be small, but I have done many things,” the elf replies, settling on a nearby rock. It is damp and cold but she does not seem to notice, just shifts her dress about herself. There is a faint smell of fur, incongruous, but Thuringwethil does not dwell too long on it, for Lúthien begins to sing.

She sings for a long time, a melody simple and sweet, and soon Thuringwethil can no longer hear the words, just the emotion behind them. The song is full of grief and longing and the fear of being left behind, of being left alone, and though these are not her emotions Thuringwethil feels them all the same, welling up in her breast in a way that makes her throat tighten, makes her feel uncomfortable. This is not for her. This is a song for gentle maidens whose lovers are lost to war while they sit and weave, wishing they could be something more than they were. But when Lúthien finishes, and she looks at Thuringwethil, something of it must show in her features, for the elf startles, surprised, and then smiles a little.

“You don’t know what you are, do you?”

Thuringwethil sighs and rolls her neck against the physical compulsion that still holds her, though it already feels a little weaker than it had the previous evening, as if Lúthien’s magic were tiring. Or beginning to lack conviction. She is something great, and wonderous, something ancient and tired: this magic feels young in comparison to her own, untested and sweet.

“They told me you were a monster,” the elf says, stepping closer. “But you don’t look like a monster. I think you might be something quite beautiful.”

Her hands end in long claws, sharp as iron, or that’s what people say. Actually, they are far sharper than that: she has checked. Sauron can force metal into new forms, ones that would make Aulë weep, but he cannot make anything that will stand for long against Thuringwethil’s claws. She keeps trying: it is good to know the limits of what Sauron can do. She looks at those claws now, strokes the sharp points of them across the palms of her hands.

“That’s your mistake,” she replies. “It’s the mistake you all make. You assume that monsters can’t be beautiful.”

“They call you a herald of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. They say you are the messenger of Sauron.”

“I am many things.”

“They call you a Fell-Beast, a shadow born of the moon.”

Thuringwethil stares at the ceiling, at the complex pattern formed by miniature stalactites. “I’m sure.”

“They say you used to be Maia.”

Thuringwethil winces, and Lúthien starts in surprise. No one has ever said that out loud to her before, though Sauron has hinted at it often enough, with wry comments about his own past combined with knowing looks in her direction. She doesn’t know if Sauron remembers more than she does, if He allowed his favourites to retain more of their previous lives, or if Sauron was simply stronger than she was. Perhaps she had given those memories up willingly. She wonders if they knew each other, in that previous life, when he still served Aulë and she… well. She doesn’t know. It could have been any of them, she supposes.

The elf is still staring at her, earnestly.

Thuringwethil frowns. “Who says such things about a creature such as me?”

She bites her lip. “Melian.”

Thuringwethil’s face is a study in stone. No feature moves, though she knows that name. It pulls at a thread of memory, one that leads to nothing but empty space. But she has heard enough. Everyone knows the legendary Queen, Melian the Fair, songbird of Lórien. Even Thuringwethil has heard her sing, creeping close to listen in without being seen in the dark night. It is said that even fountains stop in order to hear her. Melian the beautiful, Melian the Maia. If anyone would know who Thuringwethil truly is, anyone who wasn’t His servant, then it would be the Queen.

“You seem to know many things about me, and yet I know so few about you. Where are you from?”

“Doriath.”

She stared at the elf, for a long moment.

“Melian is your mother, isn’t she? I see it now. In the line of your nose, in your hair.”

She looks away. “I don’t want to talk about my family.”

“Something else then,” Thuringwethil says, and there is a sharpness to her smile. “Tell me about the man you love, girl.”

She looks lost for a moment, as if the elf doesn’t know what to say to that – how well does she even know this man she would risk so much for? Thuringwethil feels a surge of anger at him, wherever he is.

“He calls me Tinúviel,” she whispers, in the end. “He told me he could taste the moonlight on my skin, and he called for me, ‘Tinúviel, Tinúviel.’”

A twist, sharp, between her ribs. “Do you know what people like to do to songbirds, elf? To nightingales that sing pretty songs?”

Lúthien’s eyes are wide, and Thuringwethil wonders how old she is, or rather, how young she is.

“They lock them in cages, little bird. They shut the gate, and turn the key, and keep them safe and sound and tucked away from the wild where they belong.”

But Lúthien looks fascinated rather than afraid. “Do you think I belong in the wild?”

“I think all things do, if they let themselves be who they were supposed to be, if they stop playing their games of civility, if they listen to the calls of the wind and the earth.”

“And live in caves, like you?” Lúthien’s eyes flash with an unexpected irritation, but Thuringwethil just smiles back at her.

“Do you not think it is beautiful, little bird?”

Lúthien looks around her, and then once again, as if properly paying attention for the first time. Thuringwethil can see it in the way she stares, her eyes lingering on the delicate formations of rock and crystal, on the shadows as rich as wine. She watches the elf inhale the cool cave air, tasting the deep dampness of the stone, the coolness of it, the slow growing lichens and the metallic tang of buried ore. Her fingers, pale and delicate, reach out to brush against a jut of azurite, hesitating a moment over the sharpness of a ridge, the smoothness of a plane.

“Do not be so quick to dismiss these places,” Thuringwethil tells her, quietly. “They are dark, and they are simple, but they are untouched yet by the movements of the outside world. In a thousand years, this cave could still be a secret. In ten thousand years, it might echo still with nothing but the long-departed sounds of our footsteps. The world outside is ripe for changing, for aging, for growth and decay in equal measure. There is noise everywhere, nowhere to rest. But here is quiet, and peaceful. I could stand here with you for all of eternity, two ageless beings waiting for the end of the world, and no one would ever disturb us. That is the gift that the dark places give us, little bird.”

Lúthien is looking at her now, with eyes that are full of confusion and understanding. It sends something chilling up Thuringwethil’s spine, this knowledge that she has been heard and understood. It is… unprecedented.

“I would miss the feeling of starlight against my skin,” Lúthien says eventually, quietly. “The way the breeze tastes near the sea, the sight of sunbeams on river water, the sound of the wind moving through the grass. All the parts of the outside world that give me joy.”

“Not your lover?”

Lúthien winces. “That isn’t what I meant. I love Beren.”

Beren. So that is his name.

“I see the world outside,” Thuringwethil replied, ignoring the name for now. “Do not misunderstand me. I have seen more of it that you: I have flown on winds brought by seas beyond your knowledge, have traced the contours of rivers you will never know. Do not talk to a flying creature about the beauty of the world. I have seen it, and I have love for it in my hollow chest, but at the end of it all I would rather be here. Undisturbed, until you came along.”

Lúthien has the grace to look a little sheepish at that.

“Leave me,” Thuringwethil commands, for she is suddenly tired of these games. Lúthien hesitates a moment, as if wondering whether to remind her that she is a prisoner in her own home, but does not. She merely fades away, the cave growing darker and darker, until she has gone.

* * *

It takes a day for her to come back. Thuringwethil had started awake from an uneasy slumber long before the elf appeared, at the distant sound of a dog howling. She looked flustered as she came into sight, moving more quickly than she normally would. She looks more tired than usual, her movements less sure. There is an edge of impatience to her.

“I need your help,” she says, no preamble this time. Thuringwethil just smiled.

“Why do you think I would help you?”

Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes slightly red, as if she has been crying. “Because I don’t think you’re the same as the rest of them. I think you would already have found a way to kill me if you were.”

Thuringwethil smiles: her teeth are sharp. “Perhaps I’m just not hungry enough yet.”

Lúthien huffs a sigh, turning quickly, disappearing once again. But the thought lingers with Thuringwethil long after the smell of Lúthien’s skin was gone: if the elf believed Thuringwethil was able to kill her, even now, with her magic still in place, why did she keep coming back? Why had she come in the first place?

* * *

“Elf-maid, do you know that I can hear your heartbeat long before I see you?” she asks, staring as if in fascination at one of the jewels on her inner wrist, her hand level with her face, claws fully extended.

“I do not try to sneak up on you,” Lúthien says. She looked tired again today, her lips plump from being bitten on too long. “I never have.”

That much is true.

They stare at each other for a long moment. The elf looks different today, more than just tired – there is something bitter there, and she longs to taste it.

“Tell me your story,” the monster says, lowering herself to a cross-legged position on the floor, levelling herself so the princess might feel safer. It is a negligible difference, and Lúthien sits on the same rock as she did before, but the elf does at least look a little more relaxed.

“I thought you didn’t want to know it.”

“Perhaps,” Thuringwethil replies. “But days have gone by, and I find myself tired of this arrangement. And, I will admit, I’m perhaps a little curious: what is an elf-princess doing in the wild, smelling of hounds and fear and desperation, trading tricks with a monster in a cave for the love of some man who does not even seem to be here.”

Lúthien stares at the wall and does not acknowledge that for a moment. Thuringwethil wonders if she will refuse to engage, if she will walk away again, but after a moment the elf looks down at her hands, twisted in the fabric of her dress.

“We fell in love, and my father… he would not allow us to be together. I made him promise not to hurt Beren himself, but, well… My father has a cunning mind. He sent him on a quest, and Beren set out to do it… but it has not quite gone the way I would have liked.”

A princess, an unworthy suitor, a mysterious quest…. Thuringwethil resists the urge to yawn.

“He was captured, along with his brave comrades, by a creature they call Thû. Huan, the wolfhound of Valinor - he is my friend and companion, we had to go and rescue him. There were other things, other people, but all that matters is that no one would help me get him back.”

No wonder it had been so long since she had been summoned by Sauron. It wasn’t clear whether Lúthien knew the true identity of Thû, but Thuringwethil knew many of the names Annatar went by in this world. Credit where it was due – she would have to note not to underestimate this elf any more than she already had done.

“I wondered in the darkest moments whether he was even still alive, but I heard his song, and I knew he must be. We tracked him down to a fortress of stone and shadow. Huan battled first the mighty Dragluin, and slayed him, and then he fought the vile creature Thû, who changed form but could not overcome him. In the end he fled, and I destroyed the castle and found Beren.” Her voice caught on the end, as if there were something more to it that she did not want to speak of.

“We had to go on. I begged him not to continue without me, but once he has made up his mind, there is no way to change it. He would storm the heart of the fortress himself, alone and friendless… he left me, while I slept in the night. He has gone, and he will die if I cannot find him and save him.”

Her voice has grown louder, angrier. Thuringwethil sits up a little herself.

“And now you are here, wanting something from me but never saying what, staring at me with those wide eyes as if you are looking for something. Are you ever going to tell me, elf?”

Lúthien reaches out, and her fingertips are soft against Thuringwethil’s cheek. They press firm with something that she has no name for.

There is a song, there is always a song, where the princess is rescued from the monster, but that is not the only version of that tale. There is another, sung in darker halls, where the story is quite different. Oh, the characters are the same, perhaps it follows the same sequence of events, but dark things know well the power of pain, the corruption of hurt, and that it can come in many forms. They sing of the monster, beautiful and strong, how the shadows cast by the curve of her wings provides shelter for all those who prefer to turn their faces away from the sun. In their song, the princess comes, and the light she casts burns, and it is the monster who has to be rescued.

She feels exposed, burnt by an absent heat.

“Leave me,” she rasps, and Lúthien hesitates before she goes.

* * *

“I am running out of time,” the elf says on her return.

Thuringwethil sighs. “Yet you do not tell me what you seek. All you do is bring your desperation and watch me.”

Lúthien swallows. Thuringwethil tracks the movement of her throat with eyes as sharp as cut glass.

“They say creatures like you know things, sometimes,” the elf says, her voice a whisper. “My mother can see things, too. Sometimes she knows things that are going to happen, or at least, gets a sense of them. She says it is a gift shared by many of her kind. Can you do that?”

Thuringwethil frowns. “You came here to ask me to tell your fortune? I would have thought there were many better choices in the world if you were after that kind of trick.”

Lúthien shakes her hair. It moves like silk, and Thuringwethil catches the scent of her, moonlight and sweat and a pain that cannot be eased.

“No… I didn’t come here for that. Or at least, I don’t think I did. Huan brought me here. He seemed to know that I needed to come, he knew where you were – he led me right to the entrance of the cave.”

Wolfhounds of Valinor indeed. Thuringwethil might have liked to know this beast, in another time, but she suspected that it would not reciprocate the feeling. It was worth noting that he could track her down that easily though - and rather alarming, too. It is information worth having.

“What do you see when you look in my eyes?” the elf asks. Thuringwethil bares her teeth.

“Wolf teeth and burning timber. Blood and tears and death upon death. Something that shines, bright and terrible.”

The elf is staring now. “That’s… not very reassuring.”

“I’m not at your disposal, princess. I don’t pretty my words for your pleasure.”

Lúthien sits up, sharply and unexpectedly, pulling her legs to herself and wrapping her arms around them. She looks suddenly small, and vulnerable, all the confidence of her first arrival depleted. There is a tiredness to her eyes that was not there before, too. She looks younger, and somehow at the same time, terribly aged.

Something shifts, painfully and truly, in Thuringwethil’s chest. “Why do you love him?”

“It is not something I can put into words,” Lúthien replies, her voice quiet and uncertain.

“Because you do not have them? Another question, then. How do you know he loves you?”

She hesitates. “He chased me for days. When he called for me through the quiet night, his voice was full of longing. I could taste it on the breeze.”

“Men often long for things that they do not have, for things they covet. That does not mean they love them.”

The elf frowns. “I know he loves me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” _No._

She cocks her head: Lúthien’s eyes are painful to look at, full of things that Thuringwethil has never experienced herself, does not have any name for. She doesn’t know why she cares, but she does. It has crept up on her, growing in her chest like a lichen, just like Thuringwethil’s own vulnerability.

“There is something you’re not saying, child.”

“He left me,” the elf says, in a rush. “He said we would go together, but he left me alone in the cold night, he did not trust me to help him, he _left me_.”

She is beautiful in her anguish, but as the words flow out of her that pain hardens to rage, and she is suddenly exquisite, a thing of wild power and magic. The silvery glow from her skin warms and her eyes shine all the brighter: Thuringwethil would have taken a step towards her if she had been able to, would have reached out her hands to welcome this creature if she had not stopped herself. This was what she had been missing, this young thing: the wildness and courage of allowing oneself to feel.

“My father locked me up,” Lúthien says, her voice growing colder. “I begged him not to kill Beren, and he sent him to his death anyway. My mother cried, and I could see in her eyes that she knew my father’s decision would bring pain and ruin to us, but she did not say anything. I saved Beren from that fortress, and he still treats me as if I were a child in need of coddling. He would be dead if it were not for me, and yet he leaves me behind, as if I were the burden, as I were the one who needed looking after. He, with no power or gifts beyond the strength of his arms, would dare to treat me like that! Me, with a power that comes from beyond anything that he could imagine.”

She is panting now, and Thuringwethil feels lost, feels as though she has thrown herself off a great precipice, as if she is flying without unfurling her wings. Lúthien is a night of stars, cold and wild and beautiful in this moment, igniting something that Thuringwethil has no name for within her, joy and terror rolled in to one. It has been so long since she was afraid of anything, she had forgotten what it felt like, had forgotten what it meant to feel alive.

Lúthien is wild-eyed, and as she breathes her rage turns to horror at herself, to fear and doubt.

She flees, and Thuringwethil presses her hands to her eyes, shocked to find them damp with tears.

* * *

Maybe this was the way it was always supposed to go. Maybe this was how He had designed her, how He had planned for her to meet her end. Maybe all of time and every note of the song had been formed to lead to this moment, to her standing here in the darkness, waiting for an elf to return. But there was nowhere further for this to go. Lúthien was a creature of lightness and freedom. They did not belong to each other’s worlds.

This had to end.

“What is it your father set him to find?” she asks as Lúthien appears.

She still looks hesitant, and Thuringwethil hisses through her teeth in impatience.

“You told me yourself you were running out of time.”

Lúthien nods, but her voice is still hesitant. “Do you know of an iron crown, shining with three jewels?”

Him. It could have been anything, she supposed, but deep down Thuringwethil knew exactly what she was referring to. Angband, with its labyrinthine passages and sputtering torches, its blood-stained floors echoing with the sound of a thousand orcs. Angband, its throne room glowing with red light, that mighty throne raised high on a podium, shadows stretching from it, reaching for anyone trying to hide. Him, with his terrible lidless eyes, always watching, nothing escaping his notice. His soul like burning coals, destroying everything good and bright that came within reach, that had stripped away everything she had once been, that had turned her into this. His crown, with those three jewels, of which He was so very proud. 

She closed her eyes.

“He would destroy you. You do not know of what you speak, elf. This is not… it is not some story. You will not triumph just because you are good and pure and deserve to do so. There is no way inside that fortress, no way to smuggle yourself in. He knows everything that happens in his realm. He does not rest, he does not let down his guard, and between the gates and Him are armies beyond measure. All the fell creatures of the world gather there.”

In the worst versions of the song, sung in either the light or the dark, no one gets there in time to rescue anyone. Everyone ends up dead or lost or forgotten.

“There is a way,” Lúthien says. “I have seen it, in my dreams. I creep into the fortress in disguise. We cut a jewel from the crown, and we survive.”

“Few disguises would be convincing enough.”

“I know,” the elf says, and her voice is a sigh. “I would need something far beyond my own gifts. Something very few would be able to give me.”

There is a long pause.

“You need the powers of a skinchanger,” Thuringwethil sighs, and there is relief mixed in there, relief that she finally knows why Lúthien is here, what Lúthien wants from her. Finally, she has an answer.

“What are you here for?”

Lúthien shrugged, and it was a strangely human gesture for someone so ethereal.

“I don’t know. I was hoping you would have the answer.”

She looked at her hands. Her nails are claws, though she had not wished them so. They gleamed like red tourmaline in the light cast by the elf. Sometimes the princess is slain by the monster. Sometimes the princess destroys the monster. Either way, there is pain, and hurt that must be carried for years afterwards.

“Come to me,” she says, and it is not a request. Lúthien does so as if enchanted, and there is no fear in her eyes as Thuringwethil reaches for her, cradling that delicate face between hands created for destruction. That ache in her chest is back.

“You would need something sharp enough to cut iron itself,” she says.

The elf’s eyes widen. “Angrist…” she murmurs.

Of course. She has heard of the knife, of its abilities, whispered between gritted teeth from those who have fought the elves. It would do.

“You would need to get the crown from him.”

Lúthien nods. The tip of her tongue wets her lower lip. “My father locked me away. I escaped when I made the guards fall asleep.”

She has powers. The lingering trap keeping Thuringwethil rooted to the ground is testament to that. And she has learnt not to underestimate this creature, this beautiful creature, a delicate princess with a core of strength and determination.

“You will need what remains of Draugluin too, unless you plan to go in alone.”

Lúthien looks concerned now, but there is relief in her eyes too, as if she had always known it would come to this and has just been waiting for it to happen. Thuringwethil feels it too, relief that it is all over. Lúthien is leaning in now, her fingers stroking the sharp lines of her cheekbones, the brutalist landscape of her face. The elf doesn’t seem to mind that she looks like this: she is staring with fascination at her.

“Would you honour a gift?” she whispers, leaning close. Lúthien’s breath is warm against her face.

“Yes.”

She presses her lips against Lúthien’s. They are soft and motionless, but for just a moment, they press back. It doesn’t change anything, not in the way she wanted it to, but she does know what she has to do.

With her decision comes the shifting of a weight she did not know she was carrying, and she pulls away. Lúthien is watching her cautiously, but not with fear: the way a predator watches another predator when their territories collide. Her eyes are not warm, but they are familiar, and for the first time in a long while Thuringwethil’s face pulls into a genuine smile, something warm, leftover from another time in her life. She is glad that this elf invaded her space, glad that they got the chance to meet. She reminded Thuringwethil of all the things she used to be, and all the things Lúthien still had the opportunity to become.

There are many things she could do. She could distill a potion from her blood, share the power she holds within herself. She could create a pendant from her hair, cast a charm over the elf-girl. She could simply send her away, wish unfulfilled. Instead, she runs her hands down her arms. There is an urge building inside her, the urge to give herself in her entirety. There can be no half measures, nothing left behind. She has seen something beautiful, and she is so terribly tired of this thing she is calling a life.

Her skin is so soft, and for the first time she appreciates that, the fragility of her own body. Lúthien is watching her, and she does not look away as Thuringwethil digs her claws into her skin, slicing carefully, pulling gently. It doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. She had expected to cry out, but all she can do is look back, the scream caught in her throat, caught with all the other words that she didn’t know how to say.

Her blood is grey and sticky, and gets stuck under her claws. She feels strangely dispassionate about it, about her life-blood pooling around her feet.

When she is done, she passes her skin to Lúthien, and curls up on the cave floor. The bats descend, working to cover her with their gentle, warm bodies, sensing her weakness. She wants to ask Lúthien to stay a while, because she feels cold and small, but as the illumination of the cave fades, she realises that the elf has left, as silently as she came.

Thuringwethil sighs. One of the bats is making a worried sound, and there is a fragment of obsidian that feels cool against her cheek.

For a moment she thinks she hears something, a choked off sound, but it is quickly swallowed up by the darkness, and it could have been her imagination.

She closes her eyes.

* * *

There is a song, there is always a song, where the princess is rescued from the monster, where good triumphs over evil, where the stars shine brighter at the end of all things. She knows this song, she hears it echoing through the corridors of her memory, but she can’t remember the words. She doesn’t know if she will ever remember them again: they mean much less to her now than they used to. Lúthien is different now, in ways she cannot explain, has not been able to explain at any point. Not to her family, not to her lover. She feels viscerally changed, as if some part of her that used to keep her warm has been extinguished.

You always have a choice. You can go down any path laid out before you, you can forge your own, but no matter what you do you have to remember: you cannot come back again.

She might not be able to explain it, but she knows the reasons. The girl she had once been died the day she set out to follow Beren on his quest for the Silmaril, though she did not know it then. It was not until long after that she realised the weight that had settled around her shoulders, after she had died and been brought back, after she had realised what it felt like to be a mortal, after she had tasted the loss of everything she had ever known. She wouldn’t change the choices she has made, but that doesn’t mean at times she doesn’t long for her old life.

She had thought it would be easy to kill the monster in the cave. A blade had been tucked out of sight every time she had walked through that dark cave, and every time she had been too scared to go through with it, too afraid of what it would mean, what it would turn her into.

It hadn’t mattered. It might have been given to her as a gift, but it was the taking of it that had ruined her in the end.

They burned Thuringwethil’s skin. Lúthien watched it happen and was glad. She tracked the embers as they made their slow ascent into the sky and hoped that it meant something. She had not looked back to see what happened to Thuringwethil in that bleak cavern, after she had pulled her skin from her own body for Lúthien: she hadn’t dared. She couldn’t bear knowing if she had died or if she had lived. Either was too much for Lúthien to live with now. The embers disappeared into the darkness, and she wondered if they would find their way to that ethereal, beautiful monster, whether she was living or dead. Though she stayed until the fire burnt to dust, she still hadn’t found an answer.

_Why did you let me take it? Why did you give it to me?_

She wonders what stories will be told about her, about Beren, about the Silmarils, about the “monster”. She has already heard some versions of it, sung in celebration, written by bards who have never met her, have never asked her what she thought of it all. They are stories of love and endurance and bravery and triumph, but at the end of it all they are falsehoods. They are the stories that everyone wants to believe, perhaps even the stories that Beren believes. None of them explain how Lúthien got the skin. None of them ask how she managed to do it: she doesn’t know if that is just because they underestimate her, or whether it is because they don’t care what happens between women when men are not paying attention.

Sometimes she wakes in the night and stands on the balcony, feeling the night calling to her. She wonders at the choices she has made, and whether she would do the same again given the choice. She is listening, perhaps even waiting, but there is no one she can say that too. If she did, they would ask what she is waiting for, and she cannot explain. If anyone had asked her, she would deny that she was hoping to catch the distant sound of wings, coming closer, moving swiftly through the night. She wishes, as she stands there in the darkness, that she hadn’t burned that skin, that she had kept it tucked away somewhere safe and certain. She isn’t sure if she can remember the way it felt, strangely soft beneath her fingertips, or the way it smelled, like dust and ashes and the sweetness of death. Perhaps if she had it, she would know whether there was anything above her in the cold night sky, flying on silent wings and watching her.

Maybe she is imagining those things: it is hard to know what memories to trust after so many years.

All she knows, when she stands and listens to the call of the night, is that if she still had the skin she would have taken it out, wrapped it around her shoulders, felt the weight of it, and of her, and taken comfort from it.

If she could, she would step on the balcony rail, balancing on grey-skinned feet, claws clicking against the stone. She would spread her wings, full of dreams and desperation for all the things that could have been.

She would fly.

But all Lúthien can do is close her eyes against the darkness, push the memories of Thuringwethil’s voice away, and step back inside.

* * *

_Waking up at night_  
_covered in sweat_  
_the nightmares called_  
_and told me you were gone_

— Koven Wei

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Neruda, Sonnet XVII:  
> I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
> in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
> 
> Azurite – insight / Hematite – clarity / Malachite – protection / Obsidian – protection / Tourmaline - love
> 
> you can find me on [tumblr](https://northerntrash.tumblr.com/), where there are links to my ko-fi and insta.


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